


speak it free

by hinathigh



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Coming Out, F/F, I feel your pain, Internalized Homophobia, Kinda, and every female loving females, honestly if this reads a little like an autobiography or lament no it doesnt, i promise there's a fluffy ending, look i know this is a × reader fic but i promise it's more than that, no beta we die like men, ocs in the form of minor characters, reader has supportive friends i promise, this bad boy can fit so much pining in it, this is really just a fic of all the nice things i want but cant have, this is really just a love letter to kiyoko
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27076291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hinathigh/pseuds/hinathigh
Summary: The third-years call her Shimizu, Nishinoya and Tanaka call her Kiyoko-san, and the first-years call her senpai. You dream of the day you can call her Kiyoko, even as you know that all it is is a hopeless pipe dream.(Or: you’ve fallen in love with Shimizu Kiyoko, and it’s both the easiest and hardest thing you’ve ever done.)
Relationships: Shimizu Kiyoko/Original Female Character(s), Shimizu Kiyoko/Reader
Comments: 9
Kudos: 74





	speak it free

**Author's Note:**

> crossposted from my tumblr (@sa-suga)
> 
> this makes me want to write a kiyoko and yachi fic

“Shimizu,” Sugawara pokes his head through the doorway, smiling. It fades into a disappointed pout when he realizes that there’s no one else in the classroom with you.

You look up from your novel at the disturbance. 

“I think she went to see the teachers about something,” you offer, even as something cold and ugly twists in the pit of your stomach, “I can pass a message on to her, if you’d like.”

“Ah, thank you L/n-san!” Sugawara beams, white and blinding, the corners of his eyes creasing prettily — and you feel nothing. _Of course not,_ you think bitterly _, it could never be this easy._ But just as Sugawara makes to say something, you catch sight of Shimizu behind him.

“Sugawara-san,” she says, soft and serene, “were you looking for me?” With her hair tangled in some unseen wind and brushing the top of her sweater, and silhouetted in the sunlight streaming through the windows of the hall, she’s a vision.

Your stomach drops the way it hadn’t when Sugawara had smiled at you just moments before, doing a few backflips on the way down for good measure. 

“There you are, Shimizu! Daichi asked if—” Sugawara’s voice fades as they move down the hall, and you shake your head to clear the _what if that were me_ -s. 

You return to your novel. 

(You register nothing. You might as well have never learnt to read Japanese in the first place, with how meaningless the strokes of ink are to you now.

The black words mock you, too stark on their pages.)

* * *

You think you could have fallen for Sugawara. It would have been easy — when he smiles the entire room lights up, like he’s the sun and everyone else is just a flower starved for light. It _should_ have been easy, with his kind smile and mischievous eyes. 

Or maybe you could have had a crush on Daichi — the captain with the large hands like the steady foot of a mountain, the boy with the small grin like a warning. You know he’ll always be there, in the same instinctive way you know that the earth won’t suddenly fall out from beneath your feet without an explanation. Gravity, and all that. Maybe the crush could have become something more, something fuller. 

You could have learnt to love Asahi, who speaks softly like he doesn’t want to break the quiet, who shifts like he’s trying to learn the right way to move with the wind, whose eyes burn when he’s on the court. You think the warmness of his hands must be a wonderful thing to wake up to. You wish you were able to long to know what that would feel like. 

Perhaps even the boy who sits behind you in class, with the sheepish grin. Or the boy two classes down, who had bought you a candied apple back in first-year, when you’d forgotten to bring your money with you to the summer festival. 

But it could never be that easy, could it?

Because it’s not Sugawara, Daichi, or Asahi that you'd fallen in love with; it’s not even the boy who sits behind you or the boy from two classes down, it’s not the boy who bumped into you in the halls just last week, and not the boy you always see at the traffic light in the mornings. 

It’s Shimizu Kiyoko, the pretty manager of Karasuno’s guys’ volleyball team. It’s Shimizu, with the rectangled glasses like windows leading to everything you’ve ever wanted, with steel-blue eyes like the sparkle of a stream. She’s the girl in your class who is quiet but not silent, the girl with a mole just below the left corner of her mouth that _you want to press your lips to._

You’ve fallen in love with Shimizu Kiyoko, and it’s both the easiest and hardest thing you’ve ever done.

* * *

You were from her middle school. 

You remember halfheartedly watching the prefectural qualifiers for track, only there because a friend had dragged you there only to abandon you the moment the boys’ qualifiers had ended. 

You hadn’t even been paying attention. At least, you hadn’t been until the whistle blew, the wind picked up, and suddenly you _were_ — because the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen is sprinting towards you, then past you, and when she leaps over the hurdles it’s like she’s flying.

You’ve never been more gone.

(When the captain of the baseball team stutters as he asks you if you’d like to be his girlfriend, you think of the curves and lines of legs stretched in flight. You think of the there-one-moment, gone-the-next flash of eyes several shades darker than a spring sky, and you say, _I’m sorry, but no._ ) 

About a year later, when you wander into Karasuno’s halls and catch a glimpse of dark hair framing twilight eyes and a mole on the left corner of a mouth, you’re equal parts despairing and delighted. 

You tell yourself it’s because you love the way she runs, the way she jumps over the hurdles like they were made solely for her to overcome. 

* * *

Kiyoko remembers a face in the crowd, shocked and flushed. A bottle half-raised to parted lips under the sun.

She doesn’t know why it’s such a clear memory. She shouldn’t have had the time or the focus to pay much attention to the bystanders beyond the cheers.

She doesn’t know why she remembers you, but she does, and when Kiyoko walks into her new classroom in third-year to see you staring out the window, her heart sings and suddenly it’s like she’s back on that red track with the wind under her feet again.

She wonders if you remember, too.

She decides it’s too awkward a question to ask. She doesn’t even run track anymore, after all.

* * *

It’s like a guillotine. Your (unforgivable) love for her hangs over your head like a death sentence, and you’re so tired of walking around too afraid to even breathe for fear of your head sighing right off, that you wish it would _just drop already._

At least it’d be a swift death, not — not whatever _this_ is. 

“L/n-san,” Shimizu says, and you startle, nearly dropping the paintbrush in your hand, “could you pass me the paint?” 

“Yeah, sure,” you reply, voice strained, and reach over the banner to hand it to her. Her fingers brush against yours, and you barely manage to keep yourself from jolting. Still, you pull away from her in a swift motion, as if burned. 

(Maybe you are. Your body is alight where her fingers have grazed, your skin is tingling and electrical, and your blood is pounding so loudly in your ears that you’re worried you might faint and mess up the mostly newly-repainted Karasuno banner.)

“Thank you for helping me with this, L/n-san,” Shimizu continues serenely, and you force yourself to keep painting, slathering a new coat of black paint over a faded portion of the banner. 

Her hair has been pulled into a ponytail to keep it out of her face, but there’s a single strand that has snuck out of the hair tie. 

You try not to stare too obviously as Shimizu tucks it behind her ear. The shell of her ear is round and graceful, and _wow_ , you’re really hopeless, if you’re this gone for just her ear. 

_Not just her ear,_ a voice in your head pipes up unhelpfully, _look at her fingers — long like a pianist’s, but they must be rough from her years doing track; don’t you want to know how they feel in your hands?_

(Yes, yes you do. You want to know what they look like laced in yours. You want to know if they’ll feel soft resting on your hip when you wake up in the morning, or if the scratch of her callouses will be a reassuring friction. You want and you want and you _want_ —

— And that’s all it’ll ever be.

The nice things you dream of aren’t yours to keep.)

“It’s not a problem,” you manage to choke out. Then, because you’re selfish and your mouth is traitorous, “You can call me Y/n.”

Shimizu smiles. “Still,” she starts, and your heart is in your throat, if you swallow it wrong _you’re going to die, you just know it,_ “thank you, Y/n-chan. You can call me Kiyoko, too.”

Your breath stops halfway into your lungs. Your heart shudders, rises. 

Everything fades till it’s just you, and Kiyoko, and the brush in your hand, in an empty clubroom of a mostly-empty school. The Karasuno banner with the kanji for _fly_ stretches between you, and you _want_ , you want so much that it hollows you from the inside out. 

_Y/n-chan_ , you think dazedly, not _san_ , but _chan_. 

“You’re welcome, Kiyoko-chan,” you hear yourself say, and it’s _so close_ to what you want that your heart seizes in your chest, but still—

— Still nothing. This is the best you’ll ever get, this is already _more_ than you could have hoped for, and _it should be enough._

(You wonder if you’ll ever get to call her Kiyoko. No honourifics.)

The strand of hair falls into her face again, brushing her cheekbones and cradling her jaw the way your hands, tingling with longing, yearn to.

It’s awfully distracting.

(You wonder how your first name will sound from her lips. No honourifics.)

* * *

You see them the moment you step out of your classroom.

Their heads are bowed over a notebook that’s worn and creased. As you watch, Daichi's face lights up as he points out something excitedly. Shimizu cracks a smile at whatever he says.

(You shouldn’t be surprised. You’d always known something like this would happen. It had only ever been a matter of time.

It doesn’t stop it from hurting _so damn much._ ) 

“Y/n-chan!” One of your friends, Akiko, skips backwards to loop her arm through yours. Her gaze snaps to the pair you’d been looking at, and you see the exact, horrible moment that realization dawns on her. 

“I didn’t know that you liked someone,” she whispers, gleeful and conspiratorial, and your heart stops in your chest, bobbing in the rising panic, because she can't know, _no one must know — what would your parents say if the word got out?_

Then Akiko says, “Sawamura-kun, huh? I always did peg you as the type to go for the sporty ones.”

_She doesn’t know._

Akiko doesn't know that it’s Shimizu you'd been looking at, she doesn’t know that it’s Sawamura, not Shimizu, that you’d been jealous of.

It should put you at ease — after all, no one must know. 

Right?

(It hurts. You’re so tired of pretending.)

You force a smile. It’s strained, but you hope that Akiko will take it as you being sheepish. 

“I guess I do like the sporty ones,” you say, laughing helplessly. You swallow the, _did you know that Shimizu ran track in middle school?_ The words, _did you know that her legs are wings, did you know that her eyes burn under the sunlight, that her hair moulds into the wind as she runs?_ snag in your throat. 

_(I do. I know the way she looks with her hair plastered to her neck with sweat. I know the exact arch of her back and the precise curve of her calves as she leaps over the hurdles. I know her, thin-lipped with eyes alight with determination._

_I know, and I wish I could say that I didn’t want to. But that’d be a lie.)_

Akiko laughs, a loud and bright sound that fills the hallway. 

(You miss the way Shimizu’s eyes snap to your back as you retreat down the hallway with Akiko’s arm around your shoulder. You miss the way Sawamura nudges her lightly, grinning, when he realizes who she’s looking at.

You miss Shimizu’s blush at your name.)

* * *

“It’s Shimizu-san, isn’t it?”

Your pen freezes, midway through the kanji for _fly_. 

Chie waits patiently as you attempt to glue the pieces of your mind into some semblance of functionality. 

“What do you mean?” You ask finally, pen moving again. _Stupid literature homework._

“The one you like,” your best friend clarifies, and your mind screeches to a halt with terror, “it’s Shimizu-san, isn’t it?”

You jerk, the action drawing a short, jagged line down the page. _Breathe_ , you remind yourself, fingers white-knuckled around the pen still in your grip, _at least she isn’t screaming yet._

“Oh, Kiyoko-chan?” You try to buy some time as your mind somersaults for some believable reply. Unfortunately, it comes out strangled, rather than the casual tone you’d been aiming for. “Of course not, Chie-chan.”

You laugh. It sounds broken to you, sharp-edged and mocking. “Don’t be ridiculous,” you say, and your voice breaks on _ridiculous_ as you reach within your chest to dig a serrated knife into your heart, “we’re both girls.”

Chie just smiles, and it's so _accepting_ that you have to look away.

You don’t get to have nice things, you remind yourself. It won’t hurt as much if you don’t get your hopes up in the first place. 

“Love is love,” your best friend says softly, “and we don’t exactly get to choose.”

She covers your hand, the one holding the pen in a death grip, with her own. It’s warm.

“We’re all humans, and we all love other humans — isn’t that enough?”

You look up at her. _It can’t be this easy,_ you think desperately, even as your heart aches and aches and _aches_ for something you've wanted for _so long_ , just within grasp. _I’m not allowed to have nice things._

Except Chie is looking at you the same way that she’s looked at you for years, the same way that she had back in middle school as she’d dragged you to the prefectural qualifiers for track just so she wouldn’t be alone when she gave her homemade bento to a boy.

You set your pen down.

“I like Kiyoko-chan,” the words slip out of you like a bird finally out of the cage, a confession, “I think I’ve liked her since that track competition in middle school.” The words are freeing as they leave your lips in a way that you have never let them before. 

Chie’s eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles. “I know,” she says simply, “you look at her the way he used to look at me.” 

You’ve never felt as warm as you do now, in an empty classroom with your literature homework half-finished and your best friend’s hand over yours.

* * *

It’s spring, and the cherry blossoms are in full bloom.

“So,” you start awkwardly, hoping you’re not flushing as hard as you feel you are, “did they like the banner?”

Shimizu smiles. Your heart stops. You try to busy your hands by sweeping up a nonexistent clump of dust. 

“I think they did,” she says musingly after a moment, “though some of them cried a little.”

_I bet I would too, even if all Shimizu did was hand me some assignment from the teacher that I’d forgotten to do. Join the club, boys._

“Was it your juniors? You know, the two who are always jumping around you?” _Was it Sawamura,_ you want to ask, _was it Sugawara, was it Asahi?_

“Oh, I think you’re referring to Nishinoya-kun and Tanaka-kun.” There’s a fondness to her words, and you try to keep your disappointment off your face. “I think so.”

“Ah,” you say intelligently. _Guess the competition’s not just the third-years, huh._

“Y/n-chan,” Shimizu says, and it takes all you have not to just _freeze_ , “I know I've said it before, but thank you for helping me with the banner. I think it made them happy.”

You flush all the way to your toes. Your neck feels so hot you think you might be running a fever. “That’s,” you stumble over your tongue, “that's great,” you finish lamely. Then, because you’re masochistic, “I was free anyway, and it was fun.”

“Was it? I’m glad.” You dare a glance out of the corner of her eye. Shimizu is smiling as she cleans the blackboard, and your heart has reached its limit, _thank you for your service, old friend._

There’s silence again, and you shuffle across the classroom, sweeping up crumpled notes and nonexistent dust clumps. 

You’re heading to the bin at the front of the classroom to clear your dustpan when it happens.

Your foot catches on the leg of a table, and your hands, full with the broom and the dustpan, can’t catch onto the edge of the table in time. 

Someone grips your arm, and you stumble into Shimizu’s shoulder.

The world spins to a halt. 

“Y/n-chan,” _oh no, Shimizu is very, very close,_ “are you alright?” She smells like spring, faint and flowery and honeyed, and your head is going faint.

If you lean in just a little more, your noses will touch. 

And if you lean in just a little further than that—

“Y/n-chan,” Shimizu repeats, and you vaguely register that she sounds amused, “is there something on my mouth?” 

_No, but there should be. Like, my mouth._ You’re overcome with guilt the moment you think those words.

You yank yourself out of her grasp, pulling your gaze downwards to see that the dustpan has been upended in the chaos. 

“Nope, nope, I’m fine, your mouth is fine, everything is fine,” you babble, looking anywhere but at her, “You’re really amazing, Shimizu-chan! Catching me like that.”

When she doesn’t say anything, you pause, glancing over. 

She smiles as your eyes meet hers, and you have the distinct feeling that you must have misstepped somewhere, misread something. 

“Y/n-chan,” Shimizu leans forwards and into your space, “what do you want?“

“What?” Your voice rises and breaks on a single syllable. _What’s going on,_ you want to ask, but the words are stuck on the roof of your mouth, _why are you looking at me like that._

Shimizu’s eyes shine as she leans just a fraction closer. “I’ve seen you looking, you know”, she says softly, and your limbs are ice, your blood lead in your veins. 

“I don’t mind,” she assures you, and your brain short-circuits, because — _what does that even mean?_ You feel a little like screaming. 

“So what is it that you want, Y/n-chan?” 

_What do you want?_ Your mind swims. Shimizu has seen you looking. Shimizu doesn’t mind. 

Shimizu is asking you what you want. 

This is either a cruel, cruel prank, or a nightmare of your wildest dreams come true. You know that Shimizu isn’t someone who’d pull the former.

There is so much that you want — you want to wake up with your legs tangled with hers, you want to kiss her at the finish line. You want to visit her during volleyball practice to give _her_ a bottle of her own, you want to hold her hand on the road home—

“I want,” your voice comes out small and wrecked, and you lick your suddenly-dry lips as you search for the courage to answer, “I want you to call me Y/n _._ ”

Shimizu smiles encouragingly, and it’s the first rays of dawn seeping through the fabric of night. “Is that the only thing that you want, Y/n?”

Your name is beautiful coming from her mouth. It’s sweet and pure, snow melting in the first days of spring. 

“I want to call you Kiyoko,” you continue, still not quite convinced you haven’t somehow knocked yourself out and this is all just a dream, “I want — I want to hold your hand.”

Shimizu takes your hand in hers. Her palms are soft — the callouses on her fingers rub soothing circles onto your skin. “You can call me Kiyoko,” she says, softly, gently, “and you can hold my hand.” Her eyes are so achingly kind, so heartbreakingly _open_ when they look into yours that your own grow wet with unshed tears. 

_I want to kiss you._

It presses against your lips, begging to be let out — but you _can’t_. Even assuming that this isn’t a dream, you don’t know why Shimizu hasn’t stormed out of the classroom yet, why she hasn’t flung your hand aside like something filthy she’d found on the street.

You don’t know why she keeps looking at you the way Chie had looked at you that fateful afternoon, the way Chie had looked at that boy from track three years ago. You don’t know, and you’re too terrified to find out, but you want, _desperately_ , to keep it. 

_I just want this one nice thing._

Shimizu’s free hand comes up to cup your cheek. Her eyes look searchingly into your own, which are probably blown-wide with shock, _and you’re drowning_ in the steel-blue, in the twilight spring sky. 

“I want those things too,” the girl with the rectangled glasses and the mole below the left corner of her mouth says, “and I want to kiss you. Can I?”

(You wonder what your mother would say if she saw you now. 

You wonder if she’ll still let you sit at the same table for dinner, or if she’ll bundle you off to somewhere far away from Miyagi, somewhere where Karasuno’s pretty manager of the guys’ volleyball team will be nothing more than a pipe dream, a distant memory. 

_But you’ve wanted for so long,_ that same small voice that had pointed out Shimizu’s fingers a lifetime ago says, _can’t you just let yourself have this one nice thing?_

_Your mother isn’t here now._

_But Kiyoko is._ )

“Okay,” you breathe, and are treated to the sight of Shimizu leaning in, lashes fluttering, that one strand falling from its place behind her ear—

—It presses a line against your palm as you bring your hand up to cradle her jaw just the way that you’d wanted to, that afternoon spent painting the banner in Karasuno’s empty clubroom. 

It’s spring. The cherry blossoms are in full bloom outside of your classroom. 

It’s spring, and you’re kissing Shimizu Kiyoko with her hand in your hair and yours on her cheek. Shimizu — no, _Kiyoko_ fits against you the same way that kanji strokes tuck neatly into each other, and you’re crying, just a little, because she’s smiling against your lips and _this is every nice thing you’ve ever wanted but never had._

* * *

When you explain, haltingly, to your friends, Chie smiles, knowing and satisfied. Akiko pinwheels between apologising and cooing over the way you’ve hooked your pinkie finger with Kiyoko’s. 

Daichi flashes you a thumbs-up when you wander into the gym during volleyball practice. Asahi offers an awkward wave, Sugawara slaps you so hard on the back you swear you feel the ache for days. Nishinoya and Tanaka adopt you into the Shimizu Kiyoko Fanclub.

It’s spring, and you’re learning that you get to keep nice things too, like everyone else. 

**Author's Note:**

> hi i am very, very whipped for kiyoko and it shows. what about you


End file.
